


d-REM

by yizi



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, POV Alternating, Sci-Fi, Simulation, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 20:54:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yizi/pseuds/yizi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sollux and Karkat log into d-REM, a virtual simulation, to conduct their usual round of command and conquer. When Karkat gets his hands on a glitch, the game takes a turn for the strange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	d-REM

 

 

Above you, the sky distorts. 

Your world was safe one moment, marked for death the next. Now, a vacuous hole in its wall remains; one that everything surrounding it drains through—from the miniscule to the astronomical, and not a glimmer of escape. The more you look at that hole, the less sense it makes. At any moment, you expect to hear a vast croak.

This was your playground. But now, with the backdrop drawing inwards, the irony of a cage isn't lost upon you. As you reach between those bars, your hands leave streaks of colour; disjointed smears of phalanx and palms.

After several failed attempts, you address your captor instead.

“Didn't take much tugging before your cerebral yoke decided to snap, did it?”

The figure with the crown of flames has nothing to offer in its defense, save another blast of red-blue streamers. They move so fast that you're given little time to react. Just like that, your screaming pulse drops to a debilitating zero.

 

* * *

 

“Jesus. Didn't I tell you to move?”

Behind you, the braised leftovers of Player Two's target practice slide down the wall. Some of it ignores gravity altogether and continues to cling to the masonry. It's a glorious Helm's-will as far as you can tell. Who are you kidding; you're the fruit.

In the time that the spacehog's suit is reduced to an abstract crisp, you make as if to care even less about your own state of affairs—refusing to brush the ashes and cinders from your still-smouldering sleeves. Ha! You give pain your blessing as it soaks its way through the fabric.

Sollux kicks at the charred remains of your own victim. “I thought we were pulling us some pork,” he snorts, “not baking a cake.” Grudgingly, you join him for laughs at your expense—any octave higher and you might as well be raising a burnt white flag. For this reason you spend the next three levels discussing the various ways with which to incorporate the useless human parts into one's inventory.

“And a mismatched pair of arms tailored into a quaint necklace,” he adds to the roster. “Doesn't that sound fitting?” You won't bother mentioning that you're more than willing to offer him yours. Can't promise anything pretty but you'll gratefully tie them around his throat and squeeze the bejesus out of him. Fitting indeed.

However, before any such violent fantasies can take place, the two of you would first need to agree on the name of the game.

 

* * *

 

Earlier that evening, once the last-minute revisions to your avatar had been made—those 'revisions' namely involving scrutinizing dubious areas of your costumery—you threw yourself over a pile of chitinbacks pushed up against one of the walls in your tiny urban block. Their spines—both soft and unpleasant against your own—were more than just wings and extensive title descriptions. They were the outlet of your woes. _Threshecutioner's Creed_ has long served well as a pocket square to cry on. That night, Altair reserved more than one nubby ear beneath his hood, while you softly uttered exclamatives behind yours while awaiting d-REM's authorization to access their Multi-mind server. Your grubdrive chattered restlessly and hiccuped each time the holoprojector refreshed its contents over the ingenuous profile of your recently-acquired, Background Companion, Matt Demon. At last, the network's trademark casts blue residue across your face. With heavy-handed pecks you tuned the frequency on your Umbrus and plugged yourself in. Then, plopping belly-down onto your pile, you waited for the familiar warm sensation to wash over you.

There was an angry outburst of discharge. The storage shelves grew and the sloe walls behind them buckled, churned and pinched before dumping you into the whirlpool of galaxy. You were hovering there when the gatekeeper spoke; “Welcome to the Gates of D-REM,” they said. “Now scanning. Please standby while your Imago is being encrypted. Encryption complete. Now waiting on your command, Incarcerated.”

 

* * *

 

How long have you been here in this diabetic crack of half-lidded soda capsules and rowdy derision? The banter board—always full and yet starved for attention—bobs along a slipstream of heads. There are tall trolls, short trolls, and trolls whose physiques you could only dream of fulfilling. Even if you spent a lifetime lifting barbells, you'd probably die first.

For every new troll that enters the forum the dimensions grow and crop back with each exit. 

Still no sign of your co-player.

A hand works at your brow, “Tch. Where is that goddamn jackass.”

“Poing. Error. Insufficient variables. Please reinstate command.” 

The vice at the bridge of your nose tightens.

In a remote area of the block—remote enough to be private, though not dismissible—you summon a private menustall, _GoD Poing find user-location, where id equals 1 but ego is less than null, Goddamn Jackass._

Beyond the veil, six corridors whisk about the waiting block. You can't help but stare while the operator draws information from its datapool.

“Poing.” Goes the voice in your head, “Data Retrieved. The user, Goddamn Jackass, does not currently exist.”

You don't say. _GoD Poing find user-location, Incarcerated._

There's a brief moment of addled inflection, an intermission during which one of the easterly tunnels flails like a snakes neck and regurgitates a couple of young trolls.

“Error. Insufficient variables—” “Ah fuck,” “—Please reinstate command.”

“Fuck! You piece of shit!”

“I'm sorry. The variables supplied were... insufficient. Please reinstate command.” 

This little game of hate-tag, bordering on masochistic, persists until you've had your fill of humility. “Retrieved. The user, Incarcerated, is currently consigned to Level One, Ouroboros. Space-time, Unknown.”

Holy effigies. Could he possibly have picked a worse time and place to get lost? Perhaps you ought to dispatch another packet of mind-slaps. A simple nudge won't do any good. His current coordinates are about as stable as a traveling flea circus.

The block's back tunes are almost finished plowing that channel between your right aural duct and your left. It's possible that you will have a shitty two-chord riff swimming laps around the back of your cranium for the dismal remainder of your mediocre life. Life. Can't buy you love. Can't buy you life. Can't buy you much of anything at all.

Just when productivity turns prospective and verbing any noun or adjective of your conjugate life away becomes a fleet-footed memory, there's a thud next to you.

Karkat balances on all fours like a bewitched pounce-beast conjured from one end of the wormhole to the other. Aside from the static tailgating him, there's something off. Some frivolous touch made to his ensemble.

“At last. Your gracelessness. Did I not behest our rendezvous in the Pupil lounge at stellar peak? What the hell were you doing in Your-a-bore-us for the past eight permutations anyways?”

Positing himself over his heels, Karkat celebrates this new found liberty with a finger salute, “Oh hi, Dullex—!”

You politely return the honour. “Hmm. Well. I do recall some cryptic ear-sore passing itself off as apple sauce or some other frass. So, while I can't take all the credit where it's due, I apologize if I upgraded two minutes of your eventless real-time to the better part of your life spent.”

Life without hivepests would be a blessing. But if what he says is true then why bother with Ouroboros in the first place? You come to the conclusion that he is as confused as you are.

“KK, KK, KK—,” you embellish each letter, “I wonder aloud how you manage to debug anything at all. Let alone untie the knots in your shoes.”

Before he can sputter any and all excuses, you snap the epiphany between your fingers, “Oh right. Velcro.”

“I'm here!” It's all rage. “I'm here now, you pretentious shithead!”

“Here you are.” Approaching him you cautiously pluck the strings of electrical disturbance nesting in the frets of his robes. Rolling them up into tiny atoms of aquamarine between your fingers. “And you're a mess.” The growls don't subside. “Com'on, KK. I'm just adrenalizing you some.” A snarl readies at his throat; but he swallows it back, along with his pride, and deactivates so that his moirail can play tech support.

 

* * *

 

You refuse to enjoy this. You order yourself not to enjoy this. Too bad you're a slave to your own charge.

Concupiscent, caliginant, or significantly otherwise, the thought of growing old together, blackening, dying and then quietly burying each others hatchets in piles of asphalt located at the ends of amity, is a frequent—albeit more recent—fantasy.

You could get used to this. Real used.

An aggravated sigh sends you scrambling back to reality, “Sometimes I wonder if these efforts are lost upon thee, old friend.” A squeeze. “I wish I could be the quadrant you need. I really do. But you just don't listen—not to me anyway. Little surprise there though, you barely listen to yourself.”

On the other side of the wall, a warrior sylph slams the hollow remains of a carbonated e-tank onto one horn. It appears to be their fifth victim while under the influence.

Aside from feeling sufficiently spent, you muster a, “Whatever you say, hot shot.”

His hands fly away entirely. “You see. That's exactly what I'm talking about.” The warmth freezes over. “I can only take so many renditions of your stupid romcom one-liners, before random nodes begin to grow over my auricles in an attempt to thwart further trauma.”

Because you actually yen for those hours spent restive before the sagely glow of Katie Ohms putting diarrhetic words in her mouth, you tremble, “So. Are your hormones riding the teeter-totter today, or are you intentionally being a prick? What the fuck are you trying to say?”

Sollux pries out your claws digging into his uniform's double-ended torii gate. “Forget it. Let's just go. I didn't come here to play grub counselor or settle some personal score.” He pushes you with enough force that your back bumps against the menustall's rounded walls, rousing a fanfare of confetti. Sparks soar.

If anyone cares to notice, besides GoD Poing, they don't care enough to intervene. Whatever. They're all background news to you.

It's safe to say, the low blue flame is now in the red. 

“So, if not moirails, what are we then? Are you that eager to demote me to mulch? Shall I grant your proverbial weed-whacker the clearance required to religiously graze its teeth over my chest's heartstrings now or later?”

“Holy shit KK,” He searches for a way outside of this conversation, “Listen to yourself. Just shut up.”

“Listen to myself? Shut up? Which is it? Your hardware has more freedom of speech than I do.”

He laughs, “So I see you've come to conclusion that grubs have civil rights now? Does that include the faculty of condescension?”

With the wind in your favour and ample debut, you launch yourself at Sollux's thorax. He grapples tufts of your hair in a savage attempt to deter you away, but the whole mess simply feathers and slops out from his fists.

You can only imagine how ridiculous this must look. Two ornery dorks, their gangly podomeres entwined in a bout of fisticuffs.

Now you're rolling over and over, like crayfish caught in the rungs of a plunge pool's watermill. Once tossed out, you're washed ashore along with the other mineral misfits—your opponent is there too. He knocks you over effortlessly with a smack of psionics and you wail, “I HATE YOU!”

“Ugh! Seriously? I can't believe this. Why am I even here? How do I manage to subject myself to this misery time and time again? Guess what? Guess what? I've had my fill. I'm gone.”

No. A huff vacates your lungs, “If only you should be so fortunate!” You squeal haltingly, “If only! If only!”

Disbelief quietly toils his features. “I'd do it,” you hiss, “If she—if she asked me to. I'd happily oblige! I'd make you gone.” Anger is a stage, oxygen its backdrop and your hands are actors. They won't stop putting on a show. “I'd wring you up and twist you round and round the neck of her staff. Just like a ribbon around a maypole. Like the _snake_ that you are. I'd cut the cake. And place each exquisite, quivering, organ into her immaculate chalice. And then. We'd laugh and elope and dine. Together. While your life force slowly evacuates your orifices, like sap from a tree, and—and—,” you idiot, you sound so stupid, you can't breathe, “—and I don't want to fight, you're my best friend. This is s-stupid!”

Awkwardness prevails and for a long time Sollux simply stands there tossing 'I's around, as though he were picking them off hot tubers. “I—,” he sputters once more and looks around abashedly at nothing. Who is he trying to impress? Certainly not you. Wordlessly, the other troll crawls out from his stupor, makes his way around the conversation pit's shallow recess, and rallies together the munitions forgotten throughout your collision. He inspects both ray gun's chatoyancy, turning them about, probing the ribs for cracks before settling the larger of the latter into your lap. “Shoosh, KK. Come here.” And you do—come to agreeable terms. There, your admissions burrowing into the folds of his robes—miserable noises minced by the soft, even 'pap-pap's applied to your back.

Nothing exists beyond the here and now. Not the trolls galvanizing outside, the Mortarfiers and Bombassins rubbing yesternight's stats. Nor the crackle of your SFX aura.

“Forgive and forget?” Despite your best attempts not to, you nod. Afterall, he's your moirail. His words are the clarified ghee that tops you off, oiling your hinges into peaceable complacency.

Half a dozen undermining pats later, he steers you at gander length. Judging from the sudden wane of his remissions, somewhere a boundary was breached. Something has dawned on him. Could it be? The possibility that all this while he's been unearthing little other than toxic filth.

“I feel like I should make it up to you,” he starts. “So without much further ado; I have a batty secret to share. How much experience do you have with bugs, anyways?”

You chew the inside of your lip, mulling over exactly how this packs up this landslide of an ordeal.

“Very little,” you say, still feeling a bit dazed. “Unless beading larvioli husks onto monofilament counts.”

“Ha-ha. Cute. Not that kind of bug, dummy.” Sollux observes the area, those keen eyes darting over the arcade and the inhabitants walking around. After a few double takes, which only he can vouch for, he turns and hisses into your sound ducts. “Screw Poing, alright.” That determination is unsettling.

“You think that's something? Have I got a game for you, combmate.”

 

* * *

 

If your hunch is that play wasn't always a universal conflict of interest, you're not the only Igor present.

Virtual reality—that lead you into temptation, delivered you from reality—has become a regular ritual. Life works out, or it works in. Play, or get played. What goes around, comes around. Just pray it isn't two-fold. Come to think of it, reality was never the former nor the latter, but a go-between. An informer. A ladder.

As your pappies used to say, “All work and no play make Sollux a dull troll.” And when your legs outgrew the length of your coon  you suffered their incessantly whispered lacks thereof. The metamorphosis was relentless—cruel. The softness in your eyes cultivated a shell which never quite dissolved.

Where were you?  

The name of your current conquest is Space Invaders: Her 55th Coming. Badum-tish. Okay, no. Your apologies; it's _The Propagation of MUL.AL.LUL: NGC 2682, gateway NGC 206, Timeline: 060:600._ Coordinated by simmaterialist, Steve Oracle. The objective? What else? Win; a task easier done than said.

You stand by your vow to protect the brood. Save the queen. Convince player one that likening every rock formation to sugar is not a healthy lifestyle and will one day do his dental bill a great disservice.

Even if the physics are unsound, doorways surfacing and leading nowhere, time filters all in a chronologically balanced light.

They too appear out of nowhere, phosphorescent beneath your auras; larva glossed over in a sheen. Because you've done this simulation before, you already know what to do; the grubs are to be shipped off-planet—it's apart of the "game". Once a hatchling has been extracted from its hiding locale, it's bound for the synergy block. With the rout of them scattered about, you have approximately forty minutes to collect, juggle and stagger each into their respective jelly jumper, less they dry up into uniform 'turd-shaped pellets'—as your co-player so elegantly puts it. They look like iridescent bulbs of no discerning pedantry. In their prepped state, you can easily slide the PVC tube into the appropriate orifice without too much consternation—weaving them in and out with a sailor's ease. In exchange for your services, they nip sweat—and blood—from your thumbs, enjoying their last oral fix before being masked and gassed once and for all. “Watch and learn”, you say to the other troll for the umpteenth time, well aware that the redundancy has already filed his nerves down to their rudimentary wicks. “Watch and learn.”

“I'll watch and churn, for all you care!” He fires back. “Last time I checked you were such a nice, young troll. Since when did you become so grossly versed in creepometry, anyways? And where on Eden did you misappropriate these tidings of Uncle Mengele?”

“Since and wherein who else?” You toss in a bit of cheek and some extra tongue for effect. He knows there's only one 'who else' that you could possibly mean. A brief spell of calm rounds out the hard edges between you and him. “Don't hate me because I was a bibliomaniac when I was a wriggler.”

His expression hardens. The bascule bends. Make way for the dinghy. “I don't hate you because you can read, dipfuck! I despise you for _what_ you read.”

After this public declaration, he buries all further contempt inside his muffler. “This is so gross. I didn't think anything could compare to the insides of a choler bear. But this certainly takes the grub-biscuit. Literally. Poor little coon-wetting bastards.”

As if to challenge the validity of this statement, the orange glowworm in the back, third from the left and nowhere near "nappied", releases a seemingly endless cascade of copper spoils. Tinkles are barely registered over the sound of Karkat's flats scuffling against the tiles in exaggerated panic.

You steer a catch basin beneath the stream of incontinence, severing its tie to the floor. “What's this now? Sympathy for the weevil? How can you feel sorry for them, when you have no idea what _they_ feel like?” The polymer twists in your grip. “Though, if shoe-hopping is the next big thing, I'm more than willing to assist you with the fitting.”

Despite the attempts made to conceal his shoes, the next big thing is exactly that; both your feet firmly planted over his. One hand grapples the back of his neck, while the other struggles against his overbite. It's a joke. At first. A bout of which your co-player dabbles in caged laughter. But the spice loses its bite fast when it's followed by the baleful sounds of pharyngeal motility. He swats you, and there's wildfire in his eyes. “Okay! Enough! It's not funny!”

Oh, but it is _something_ alright. Something else. Something new. Something more. You always wanted that _more_. Your fingers strain against his maxilla and already a splotch of venom stains your palm. 

“What's funny?”

In an instant you have overthrown him, bridled him from behind—his head bracketed neatly between your knees.

“Say 'Ahh',” you insist as you draw him back into your lap.

He obliges with a snarl, “Argh!”

Close enough. You hook a thumb below the roof of his mouth and steadily feed the line down his throat. His claws are everywhere, raking and scouring the skin under your sleeves. As his eyes blaze from amber to embers to bituminous and he reduces your gloves to ribbons, an overflow of venom pools about his tongue and teems over his lips. You can only laugh.

“We'll be lucky if this tiny lil mask fits around your nose, let alone your big, fat mouth.” In that instant, Karkat's sheers come clamping down on the line, and with one last tug it snaps. The end of the tube disappears behind a black hill of tongue and for a handful of breaths you simply hover over him, the piece of plastic still clutched in your grip. He lays there, the worst expression plastered to his face. Two mannequins prearranged in a precarious First Aid reinactment. If it comes to abdominal thrusts, all systems are must—your body is ready. Figure one pummels your hands away with his fists and turns to haul his catch aboard. It arrives in a gelatinous mass of what appears to be a throw-net and noodles.

For a moment, that's all there is: the colour, aroma and shape of bile. What did you say? Games have come such a long way.

"Is that seriously partially-digested macaroni I am seeing?"

He hits you hard in the gut before stumbling to his feet and grabbing onto the wall for leverage, his breath tumbling out in front of him.

Karkat doesn't turn to face you. He straightens to his full height and teeters away from you, his head framed by the sky's smoky brume. Light hastily undresses the other half of him, exposing the fists in his sleeves, the tremble in his knees. He's not made of glass, but a mirror that reflects the dramatic shifts in yourself. Your head feels as though it were being squeezed by something chrome and artlessly cruel. These are symptoms of infamy. You've become a pale shadow of humour. A dunce. A clown. A capital 'A'. One day you'll both look back on this as little more than a lesson in adolescence—a tail between the legs.

Once the other troll has regained his breath, he turns and snarls. You feign laughter. This only compels him to drown himself in his linen. “Don't laugh! Don't touch me! Don't even look at me!!”

“Heh. Aww—”

“No!” Karkat squawks. “I don't want to lose the game 'cause your auxiliary ego also happens to be your secondary arsehole.”

How appropriate. “Look. I only did what was necessary, alright. To advance the game's progression?”

Your excuses are like dead wrigglers flung against a fortress. “No! Shut up! That's bullshit. What's next? A cut-scene wherein Martin McFly tops off Doc Brown? You didn't _need_ to do that! Don't even try to be jocular with me, Captor!”

Topped-off or cut-back, the last thing you need is another bawl-out scene. No crying until the end. Then again, this is the same troll that cried for the entirety of _Landforms Along the Shoreline of an Ocean_. “I'm sorry,” you offer.

“It's just a game. We're almost finished here. And once we are, we can proceed to the next zone. The _nursery._ ” When the trenches at his face deepen, you tack on a desperate, “No seriously. After we've met with the Grublike Emperor—or whatever—it's off to the nursery. And you-know-who awaits us there.”

The echos throughout the facility, accompanied by the industrial thump of surface transit, are a classic bassline for thought-release. Two and a half measures into which your co-player uses a sleeve to mop the spit at his chin. Once relieved of its duty, the burlap slops back down to his side, a dark blot blooming at the hem, “The mothership?”

Your grin couldn't be broader. “Only Mother Matrix and the whole deep space sixty-nine.” Oh, how you long to slam another rimshot; although it's far and beyond your better interests. Would an eyebrow waggle be too much?

For some reason, you figured this news might beam him up some. As it were, the wall's previous shelter has become an insult and Karkat makes a great show of percussing it to no avail. At last he gives up and buries himself in it instead.

“What's the matter?” He burrows deeper still, until they are nigh impossible to differentiate; your partner is now one with the architecture. “Sudden case of pupaephobia? It's alright, babies scare me too.”

“Dude, I'm not afraid of some stupid babies.”

“That so?” Approaching him, you trace an index finger along the silver mandalas at his belt. “Well then.” With the slightest flick, you send both careening against their axis. “You first, galaxy troll.”

 

* * *

 

_Mind the gap_ , he says. The gap? More like bottomless pit.

You had a dream, that glass doors lead to worlds beyond those displayed in their frames and both loomed on forever in countless directions. Lattices of resin—fetus in fetu, encapsulated in amber. Words had nowhere to be; so they relocated to your fists to serve as reminders of how affluent you once were, how you could be, how you could convince anyone to just _be_. You found that history wasn't moving forward, but backwards. The mass of every star in the universe was pulling you back, faster and deeper into a sinkhole—that dilated pupil was your own. Crashing through each tier of karstic flesh—iron and celerity shrieking throughout the descent—until weightlessness caught you in its grip and slowed your fall. You slept. Beneath stone sheets speechless ghosts drew their dreams. There were others like you too. Some alive—others barely. Their spiracles breathed, but their mouths were sealed by hook and thread. Those hooks were yours. That thread, an extension of yourself. You, a puppeteer. A host and guest in this twisted skein made hidden in finery of blood.

It's then that everything came crashing down upon you. Your dreamland, fragile as glass.

Of course it was only a dream. But this? As if this were any better, not to mention any less dangerous.

From where does Sollux conjure these anomalies? Your id may never know—might never know the majesty of his ten dexterous code-mongers. If only you could place yours between his; share the same half-life, exact the same air using the other half of his gloves.

“Worry not, KK,” he stops to chirp once the drop-off becomes visible. “I've got your back.”

You're about to wonder aloud 'what the fuck for', when the skyline spells it out for you. There it is. The vast incision. The mark of an old Hadean wound picked away by wind and heat, that never quite healed. The decline is so sharp that if you held an inclinometer next to its edge, the scale would bow and break from modesty. Down in the gorge, basalt shelves ripple like corrugated cardboard. A bit too Dante-esque for your taste.

Player two gathers whatever he can of your matesprit handles, and gives them a gentle nudge forward. “All of it.”

Maybe you wanted to recalculate that sum for him. Maybe it was fear that fueled your movements. Either way, here you are, inching your way across the canyon's thread-thin ridge. You stretch the seconds past their expiry, taking each step slowly and deliberately. You're being puerile and you're proud of it.

“Holy celibacy,” Sollux mutters behind you. You just know he's wearing his face down, grating the exasperation there with gritty palms.

“Holy exploding ass-veins, yourself!” The assembly line of consonants veer off into the gorge. Only to rebound in an arid “yourself, yourself, yourself—”

Other than these acoustic guides, the trek is pocked with absconding stones and aborted pupal casings which flutter tragically throughout the occasional updraft before lying to rest. You, on the other hand, simply hyperventilate. What remote areas of salvation remain accessible, are already inhabited by slime; metallic-red cities and fungal skyscrapers. How such geography assembles itself, you dare not question.

“Dude. Hurry up!”

Your teeth realign themselves.

“And plummet to my death? I'll be the magistrate of that, thank you very much.” As if on cue, your boot tip snags on an inauspicious ledge, tossing up a skirmish. Half of which disappears into that molten hell as if existence weren't even a thing.

It isn't long before you reach the checkpoint at the opposite shore. You wait for Sollux to land with his ridiculous full-body halo of red and blue flames. 

“Aw yeah! On the starboard! Who needs wings?” The air swishes around your punches. “When you got this?”

He chuckles in a hardly sincere way, “Yes. Congratulations, hot-pockets. You've completed level one on easy-mode. Just watch yourself around that aperture.”

“What on Eden are you slurping on about—” as you turn to ream on him, you catch glimpse of this second "aperture". It looks like a portal—a blur spinning itself flat.

Amidst your ogles and the glitch's burbles, Sollux lowers himself to one knee, “Gimme your hands for a sec.”

Your skepticism inflates, chiefly due to post grievances. That, and if he puts a kismet ring on it, you will most surely die.

“Aw, come on. I promise they'll be returned unscathed. If by some murderous whim they're dismembered, next mealworm is on me.”

“It's always on you.” Some way or another. Besides, that's not what you're afraid of.

Regardless, you grudgingly present them.

Does your cosmogram mention anything about being a hopelessly devoted schnook? All signs point to 'yes'. He starts by turning your gloves inside-out, rolling their blackened lips back over your wrists, encouraging them along carefully and evenly over each finger, up and over the barrels of your joints. When they hitch, he persists until they're off and your nipped flesh is cradled within his own.

“Now, watch,” he says, “And learn.” It makes little difference whether you roll your eyes, his gaze is fixated on your stubbed thumbs.

The stone he places at your palm is flat and smooth, standing out against the grey of your skin. Sollux steers your hand over the glitch. For an intense cleft of second, nothing happens. Then, the stone teeters and it wobbles. You can feel neither the pivots nor the fulcrum, but you do hear the sound alright; a lofty crescendo. Then it's gone, just like that, lost between the grates of your fingers. Shocked, you wrench your hand away, opening and closing it and searching your palm for something that can neither be seen nor felt.

“But,” you muse. A lopsided grin skews your wonder, “how the fuck did you do that?”

In what is _seriously_ the worst imposture of Sherlock Ohms ever, he drawls out a, “Sedimentary, my dear Wattson.” If his little magic charade hadn't already set the standard's bar, you would deck him with it.

“Well. You're the script kitty who wants to familiarize with ATH. So. Familiarize.” From nowhere he summons a second stone, and shucks it toward you. It connects with your shoulder. “Six spacehogs. Or late morning delivery is on you.”

And he's off before you can accept the challenge.

It's an avian. It's a fixed-wing intergalactic aircraft. Nay, it's super douche. Whose malaise school-fed methods never fail to make the grade. In a bad way. Yes.

“Oh, KK,” he chimes over his shoulder from where he floats, bearing a grin so large it glows across the gorge. That smile is purely teeth. “I like puparoni on my pizza.”

A growl escalates in your throat but the effect is wasted; Sollux is already coat tails and beyond, faster than a sorting drone scooting through an obstacle course of highly collidable machinery, off to heist the cradle.

With little else to argue with, besides yourself, you get to work throwing whatever random shit you can find into the pit.

The portal keeps a discerning eye on the score, shattering the small sacrifices when they're carelessly tossed. Roaring when they're not. You wonder if there's anything to it. You go through so many rocks—literally—that by the time your co-player returns, your arms are crawling with nicks.

“One, two, three, four, five, six—” he uses a toe to rifle through his collection of spoils, counting off each head as he goes. Or what's left of them. The scent of incinerated flesh saturates the air between you and him. “Let's see what you got, cookie.” And so you oblige; imparting 'what you got' unto him.

Your first few attempts are laughable really. And your demonstration aides drop numerous times before they achieve resonance. The small, rounded stones plant themselves among the shale with tiny, unceremonious 'thunk's. Player two is brimming with pompous mirth, emitting a nausea-inducing stream of cackles. One day, you promise him pain.

He can chuckle all he wants, but the battle for pride is nearly won. When the rock's code finally syncs in, you grin victoriously from the shadows of your hood. “So. Are you going to tell me what this is good for or what?”

If he's impressed, he sure doesn't look it. A flick of his wrist, and your hard-earned stone is spirited away. It reappears in his fist where he carefully inspects its surface for a good five or six rotations, and then rolls it into the well.

Again, there's no succinct 'plop'. And after about ten second's worth of awkwardly exchanged glances, the pebble comes spitting back up. Sch-lok. It hovers inches above its deathbed in angelical splendor. You've heard of seraphic reptiles, but, this is ridiculous.

His face and yours remain locked. His interest piques. You're overdrawn. _Some moments are priceless. For everything else, there's MasterQuartz._

“What if,” he starts, in a sly, velvety undertone, “I told you. You could fit the whole world in your hand?”

He gets to you. He really gets to you.

“Would you hold it?” He corrals the air, and whirls it about his palm, before setting it free. “Or let it slip away?”

At this point, the acoustics choose to intervene with an uncomfortably prolonged groan. It takes you back to where you are. What you're doing. Who you have yet to become.

You 'haw' and 'heh', while his own expression remains rigid. Not even the pasty fallout of a tweet-beast could move him. The look on his face comes from another planet—a planet operated by robots that serve robots.

A beat passes unnoticed. Warmth creeps in close. And you think, _this must be divine euthanasia_. The afterlife's hearth is but a breath away. This is what it feels like to make the gasp between life and death. Sollux's pinch, however, wakes you up. Severs the line that ties reality to nirvana. He has a mouthful of sniggers in one mitt and a cop of feel in the other.

“I'm pulling it, KK,” he can't stop laughing. Who says laughter is the best panacea? It isn't alleviating much; that's for sure. Your doubt still has the adamancy of a hiccup.

One step forward, two steps back. That's what they say. There's blood and sweat before you even know who or where they came from.

“Or am I?” you counter.

You absorb his confusion. Revel in it. Wear it like a second skin. Once armed, you attack.

Next thing you know, he really is squeezing the bees out of your knees. Pulling on your leg, as you knock your own horn against his cranium. Behind you, the portal howls; a scratched record repeating the same words over and over again, sojourning you with its maw of dark matter. Shrieking your name, suiting you up for xenocide.

“Or am I?” Growling, you drag the two of you down into the black gullet of the abyss.

 

* * *

 

All around you, colours slither into the next. Like heavy strokes of paint.

Everything is moving so fast, you think your insides might have relocated to the outside of your body. Whether they have or haven't, they'll eventually relinquish themselves and work their way up to that great hematic wheel in the sky where they'll transcend their carnal limits. Honestly, you're not sure whether things are going up or down at this point. An uncertainty of which includes yourself. You could be going around and around, spinning like a ceramic stellarina on a crooked torque. Like Moiraila Shearer in her ruby-red shoes, magicked by delusions of grandeur. Dancing up dust on the way to her next Academy Award. Any moment now, you should arrive in the Land of Cannes.

_What are you even thinking?_

“Oh! My! God!” You roar through the turbulence. The acceleration isn't helping. It rounds out the corners of your mouth, pins back your lips, and force-feeds you your own words.

“Sollux!” Instantly dissolved. “So—x?!” A prayer for the soles of those recently departed. “S—ux?! Sol—”

All sirens cease the moment your lifeguard appears. Your cardioblaster completes a maneuver that is not unlike flight.

From a distance, something dives into view. A ball of light leaving an ethereal zig-zag in its wake. It pares the darkness as easily as one might cut through the fondant on a grubcake. Come to think of it, that trajectory is straighter than you thought. The path behind it, more tail than trail. And it isn't diving so much as crashing, advancing like a meteor. Closer and closer until you can feel it. Oh, Gog. You feel it. A wave that might shred the very foundation of space-time to pieces.

You're just about to piss your britches—not exactly a pleasantry under zero-G—when, in an echo of Trollity, it speaks. “I'm here, KK.”

“Sollux?” You find a fragment of him. A hand. Which you pray is connected to its counterparts. It is.

“Sollux?”

“It's me.”

Your grip continues to tentatively wander up his body, locking desperately onto the hills of his shoulders, fumbling over his slender neck, pattering over the terrain of his ridiculously prolific face. And are those his nook dabblers sporting the small of your back? For an uncomfortable duration you maintain that climactic proximity, and make sure his head is exactly where you want it before rearing back your own and planting a Keratic Kiss there. Bam! Right in the schnoz. “Fuck you!”

Somewhere along the drop, velocity eases up. Forming consonants is no longer a quandary. Sollux releases the spot at your back to nurse his injury, his sleeves flapping wildly about his elbows. “Ouch!” He honks into his makeshift bandage. “Unnecessary!”

You beg to differ. Yet again you fill your hands with as much of his tacky Star Peace vestments as you can, hold yourself at arm's length, and glower at him across that starless straightaways. When the other troll eventually removes his hands a trail of sap dribbles from his left nostril, “Can I say I'm impressed?”

“No!”

When he smiles, the blood-moustache stretches gruesomely. “Well, too late. I just did. Bonus points for you.”

Your sigh comes and goes. Fact is, you're flattered.

“Well. Isn't life just full of strange, little victories,” you mutter aloud. More for your bemusement than his.

There's a sliver of truce that allows you and him a moment of calm, and the next gateway opens, like the smoking gun barrel on the opening credits of a Double 'o' Sevens movie.

 

* * *

 

Some days, you choose to live. Others, you're forced to. But today, from the moment you woke up you knew it was as good a day as any to keel over in your coon and die. Numerable factors would help denominate that trigger.

The foremost being everything else. Space. Scruples. Time. Which also happened to be the staple decor of your room. Scrap that; the only component of your respite block that isn't strewn across the floor, buried under a pile somewhere, or boxed between silicomb. Time keeps constant watch above your bed. It's the first thing that greets you once the slime has been cleared from your eyes, and the last as the green narcotics wrap you up for the day. Always with the same wake-up call; a line of numerals projected from a timepiece onto the high-ceiling walls of your flat.

Last night you were roused from your dormancy when the candid boldface bore into your own. Blinking your eyes, the alarm—blurred beneath sleep's throw—slowly augmented itself into a lucid reality. The numbers winked back. On and off. 

“GAME:OVER... GAME:OVER... GAME:OVER...”

The message ran from one end of the block to the other. Except, when you flew out of bed to investigate the machine, its reading was clear. 6:443:0734. So that you were left with no other choice but to ransack your hive at least one hundred and thirty four times over. Or until you were marginally convinced there was no such thing as invisible trolls. Assuming AA hasn't already long since disproved this rationale.

Trust no one. Not even your own oculars. Negative. Especially not them. Nor the dipshit that dragged you down to hell with him.

Even now, you gauge yourself in a ritual of a similar caliber. Are you dreaming? Or not? How is time passing? That pinch is still pending.

And Chthonic—whose gravity only moments ago held you in its arms—is now the oily grey of a cooked embryo. Dead pixels linger where activity once bred. Staring back at you, the eyes of a dead child.

There's no medium for sound here in the outback. Only absence and a blank slate that awaits musical citation. Without staves herding them in, notes of woolbeasts wander about aimlessly. If there were any such notation, Karkat's music would surely send them scattering. You swear that troll is his own instrument. Take the throat of your average drone; it's lightweight and portable. The vocal cords, elastic, flexible. The diaphragm, a robust accomplice. In his case none of the above cooperate. The result? Orchestral Armageddon. Dare you mention his footwork?

Player one continues to gape in quiet disarray. His mouth open for once without issuing sound. The sustained breath of a hi-hat. Gosh. If he thinks that's something, wait til he figures out you've merely licked the surface of the gobstopper.

He figures out something alright. His attention is torn between that pewter egg and the ovate chunk of lead that—you think—is your head. Some invisible force grapples with his neck, pivoting it back and forth. Denial perhaps? Less you beat him to the punch, the leash on his temperance snaps. And he's off, leaping toward the membrane. A red flagella of sash waggling behind him.

If eggy-weggs are what he wants, who are you to deny a speed boost.

With two paws of boot and an “Alley-oop!” it's kitten speed ahead. For a moment he's a toaster pastry and you're a blue-red rainbow. Then, 'Pop'! He's back where he started; inside the bubble. He spatters nonsense directly into the zone's core and the spit vaporizes before achieving any such contact. His particle count is a lot heavier than you imagined. The system dump is not helping either.

When the worst has past, you duck your head inside too. Only to discover, the worst has yet to come.

“—crazy, stripe-assed wasp! Poking your arrogantly upturned proboscis in everybody else's business! I knew you were desperate! But, slithering your scaly claws into the mothergrub's egghole to rob her of that filth!? Then happily flying off like a goddamn fuckbucket!? That's gold! That's rich! That's—”

He's flipping his shit. Shaking all over. Like he just took an 8-ball of Special Stardust. “Come here so I can cull you better!”

“Ha! Whose crazy now? Who was the one making a bee-line toward their surreal demise? What were you hoping to accomplish? Suicide?” The altitude drowns out your words. All you can sense is his panic. “This wasp just saved your ass!”

“No! Okay. Just. Shut up!” It's doubtful he can even hear you, “How are we supposed to get back then?”

You spend a lavish amount of time simply observing the coronal discharge below. Coasting along with the plasmic worms as they curve up and over the continental shelves. Listening to the roar of hot, electrical circuitry. “Well, why didn't you say so? All you need do... is die.”

The thrashing stops and Karkat hangs there, limp, yielding, putty in your claws. His arms outstretched ready to embrace all or nothing.

No shortage of faith here. Although, you certainly don't know what you did to earn it. “Oh, KK. I'm kidding. So no need to soil your pull-ups quite yet. Keep it high. Keep it dry. And I'll eagle us down in a sec.”

“Yeah, no duh,” he tries to right himself but plummets back. “I know the neurotic twitch of mental instability when I see it. I'm not stupid, y'know. I'm not a coward either!”

“Alright, alright. Sheesh. Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“No, you.”

The silence that follows is a double-edged kindness. A language without words, numbers or symbols. Conversations between informants of the body. The more of him you reel in the easier it gets. By the time you're spent he's taken over the legwork. Even if that entails him using you as a stepladder.

Once you and your co-player are outside the sphere, you brace yourself for a reckoning. And yet, rather than chewing you up and spitting you back out, he latches onto you — like an engorged tick aiming for a flushed heart. Yours, for its part, melts. It'd tender more than you could spare.

In any case, Karkat doesn't ask for permission. Besides, his attention is elsewhere. There's a look on his face that queries, _is there anybody out here?_

He brings both hands up and couples them about his mouth, _IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?_ With the insertion of three or more "fuck"s. _IS ANYBODY FUCKING OUT THERE?_

When he pauses to bank your response, he smiles a smile to upend all smiles; so wide, so true. You think _this is it_ , in T minus five seconds, you will commence your first "real" kiss. Whatever happens next, happens.

You gauge the size of that opening, steadying your mark.

The moment passes and nothing happens. You clear whatever it was that lodged itself within your throat. Any magic that may have ventured near is dispelled with a dry, calculated cough.

To top it all off, you soothe a spot that doesn't even remotely itch. He doesn't mind it like you mind it, and simply tugs on your sleeve once his curiousity wanes. A sharp kick to the shin demands a move on. And so you do, but not before giving him a grand tour of the Easter egg's outer shell, his arms fastened around your neck as you jet over its landmarks. You roundabout every crack and cranny of the massive distorted fuck-up of a thing, each footprint leading into its empty hull. Or were they leading out? A debate you enjoy much less than the grin that burns its stigma across your chest.

And yet, you can't shake this heavy feeling that you're being watched.

 

 


End file.
